


How You Are With Me

by YesBothWays



Series: I Am So Okay With It:  Supercorp Stories [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Cinnamon Roll, F/F, Femslash, First Time, Making Out, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strap-Ons, Sunflower, Trauma, cause that's how pvc muscles work, i'm trying to kill us all, means that Kara has super-orgasms, vag of steel, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-22 19:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: (Updated summary)  This is many pages of great sex between Kara and Lena.  And everybody talks about the deep conversation they have in the night.  (I so deeply love femslash readers.)  Basically, their emotional chemistry moves into physical chemistry, and both are one thing.  This entire series is quite introspective, intimate, and character driven with a focus on revealing their depths and histories.I wrote this after we all got TIRED from watching Kara suffer over her sexuality.  Obviously, Kara would be great as a sexual partner and deserves all of the best sex.  She and Lena feel like they're in love, so.  (James is also beautiful.  Why can’t we have nice things.)  Given my state of mind, a lot of shade gets quietly thrown at gendered sexual politics and rape culture in this.





	1. Exactly Like She Was

            As Lena gathered her bags out of the car, she thanked her driver, Tom, and said goodbye to him for the day. The sun was already dropping, and she was relieved to finally be arriving at Kara’s place after a ridiculously long workday that ended out the week. The heels of her boots made a distinctive sound on the sidewalk that made her think. She decided on an experiment and shook the bag of coconut macaroons held in her hand that she had promised to bring to Kara and announced their presence aloud right there on the street. Sure enough, Kara appeared at her windows, hands held over her head, clearly yelling in her apartment in excitement.

            Lena laughed all the way into Kara’s building and up the stairwell. Lena preferred they spend time together in Kara’s apartment compared to her condo. Still, she wanted Kara to feel invited into her own life, as well, so she would easily concede whenever Kara seemed to want to come to her place instead of meeting at her own. She found out that Kara had only formed an attachment to coming over to her place due to the bakery on the corner and specifically these macaroons. So Lena won her way in their last negotiation on where to meet easily by promising to bring these with her.

            Kara opened her door as Lena approached. Lena held the bag, heavy with sweets, out in front of her, but Kara reached past it to grab her instead and bring her inside the apartment and right up against her own body. Kara started kissing her right away, and Lena wound up with her back pressed against the closed door, not entirely certain how she got there. She had dropped her bag and the bag of sweets on the floor. Her arms were stretched over Kara’s shoulders, her hands knitted together behind her. Kara’s presence washed over Lena and felt entirely encompassing, comprised of every single thing: a sight, a taste, a smell, a touch, a heat, an atmosphere, a force akin to gravity. Lena’s legs weakened slowly at the continued feel of Kara’s body pressing up against her own, and she probably would have knelt down on the floor were it not for the steady press of Kara’s strength that held her up. Kara finally stopped kissing her and leaned her head forward onto Lena’s shoulder.

            “I’m glad you’re here!” Kara said.

            “Me, too,” Lena managed.

            Lena let her head tilt forward as she held onto Kara with both hands at the back of her neck. When Kara finally leaned back, smiling, Lena took in her expression as best she could. They had not seen one another for a few days, and Kara was beaming over her arrival. They had only known each other for a handful of months, and Lena was already absolutely convinced that no one had ever loved her this much before in her life. Quite possibly other people simply were not in possession of as much love as Kara held inside of her. And Lena found herself almost broken open by the feel of it. Her chest ached vividly as if her heart expanded in such moments with Kara to embrace what all was there. Certainly, Lena had never loved anyone as much as she loved Kara. And the feel of this between almost made her shake. She still had trouble tolerating the feel when she found herself suddenly confronted.

            Maybe Kara could feel the change when Lena became a little lost inside of herself. She stepped back and opened out a space between them. She stooped to snatch Lena’s bag and the paper bag off the floor. She took both to the table nearby, and already reached inside the bag to pop an entire macaroon into her mouth. She chewed valiantly as she went and got Lena a glass of water. Lena found herself laughing at the sight of Kara’s squirrel-like, overstuffed cheeks.

            They made a beeline for the couch, Lena carrying her water glass and Kara clutching her bag of sweets to the middle of her chest. Kara opened the bag and held it out to Lena, and she took one. She broke the huge sweet in half and gave the half she did not want to Kara, who made it disappear with quick ease. Lena stretched out her legs and let herself feel tired for a moment. She knew from experience that her energy would rise once she shed the feel of the workweek and felt herself in an open space without anymore outside responsibilities.

            She told Kara the briefest summary she could manage of the boring details of the past few days, and Kara listened intently. Spending time with Kara had made Lena aware of how truly bizarre it was to think in the logic of business where hypothetical profits not being made were understood and felt as losses. Kara often misunderstood what Lena was saying until she caught onto this difference. Kara had then mapped explicitly how Lena’s arguments at work were heated not when the company lost money but when someone felt a strong conviction that they might have made more. The idea of earning money with a sense of anger or loss over the _even more_ money that might have been made absolutely shocked Kara and made her laugh. Since then, Lena had felt her own experience of her work mellow out a little.

            Kara rambled through some accounts of own life the last few days. She was very clearly already thinking about kissing Lena again, but she was in no rush. Lena smiled already at the mere suggestion. This calm, easy tension felt more familiar feel than the eager rush of Kara snatching her up when she first arrived. Lena liked the feel of both, she realized, she had just been caught a little off her guard at the door. She hoped Kara would not be put off from coming after her uninhibited that same way again and did not think that she would. They had been taking this all very, very slowly here at the beginning of their relationship. The hours they had spent kissing had piled up until Lena found the thought would nearly make her laugh. They were growing increasing comfortable with one another, and Lena felt like a lot of great sex could come tumbling out between them at any time at this point. They just had not quite found the right place, the right time.

            That night they been able to kiss one another fully for the first time, sitting on Kara’s couch, the immense energy created between them kept the two wide awake late into the night. They were both accustomed to pulling long nights when the occasion arose and probably would have ended up staying awake until daylight moving back and forth between kissing and talking. After three in the morning, Kara received a call that she answered. Lena saw immediately that she had to go help. Kara offered Lena to drop her off at her place. The assertiveness of Lena’s refusal made Kara tease her about flying anxiety. Lena kissed Kara in a last round of passionate kisses before Kara made her way out, as Lena’s phone rang against her ear, calling the private company she used to get a driver sent over. She stood at Kara’s windows and looked out over the streets as she waited, absolutely peaceful in the quiet house that still felt so much like Kara’s even when she was not there.

            That pattern remained over the past days and weeks. Kara would always answer her phone whenever it rang. Sometimes, it was just her friends calling for smaller reasons. Other times, Kara’s spine would straighten, and she would whisk off to save the day in some desperate situation. Once, she came back quickly, smelling of smoke. Lena had teased her about it as they kissed some more. She had found that the usual tension in Kara’s body had changed and she was less relaxed. Her hands on Lena’s body touched her more carefully, almost as if she were overcompensating for their subdued strength. When she got home, Lena had clicked on the television for the surreal experience of watching footage of Supergirl saving people from a burning building while remembering waiting in her apartment, sipping tea, keeping their make out on hold.

            As if remembering something similar now, Kara got up and found her phone. She seemed to be texting for a minute or else changing the settings. She dimmed the screen and put the phone on the table.

            “If that ends up ringing tonight, it’s Alex and probably for real,” Kara said.

            “How’d you manage that set up?” Lena said.

            “My friends are awesome,” Kara said.

            “So Alex is your gatekeeper?” Lena said.

            “Pretty much. Hank is backup as a fail-safe. He can put in calls from her number,” Kara said.

            Lena found it strange to think that all those people would know when Kara was with her. The idea would have made her stressed beyond belief if it were not filtered through Kara’s total comfort with the situation. Kara needed to trust that tether to the vigilant watch being kept over the city in order to focus on anything else. That Kara’s inner circle supported their relationship still shocked Lena. Perhaps especially Alex had surprised Lena most of all. She still felt rigid and guarded around Alex for absolutely no reason. No one seemed to notice. She hoped it might fade out eventually. For now, Lena was just glad she did not physically startle the last time they were all together when Alex placed her hand on Lena’s back in a sweet gesture as she came up behind her to get her glass of wine from the kitchen table. The touch rattled her for the entire night, and she dodged out at the end of the night with distant goodbyes and barely even kiss for Kara. Now Alex was shielding Lena and Kara’s time alone together, and the thought made Lena slightly stunned.

            “I’m all yours,” Kara said with a coy sidelong look over at Lena.

            “Oh, my,” Lena basically rasped, as she came over at once to get her hands on Kara at once after that coy flirtation.

            Kara kept on laughing softly. Lena got her arms around her and rocked her back and forth a little, and then Kara let Lena drag her off balance and tumbled back into the couch cushions. Lena leaned over into Kara, and they kissed. The weight and disarming affect of their connection washed over her. Rather than growing overwhelmed this time, Lena became increasingly excited and relaxed into the feel of their kissing. Kara had a strange way of subtly bringing Lena’s body closer to her own, until they would end up in odd positions with Lena somewhat suspended across Kara’s lap. She found herself in one now and nearly laughed.

            This time, she climbed onto Kara’s lap with one knee on either side of her. Kara’s eyes were glancing unfocused at Lena’s chest, and she was smiling a little. Lena realized she was listening and that made her aware of her own heartbeat. Simply climbing onto Kara’s had made Lena’s heart begin to pound in her chest.

            “Are you listening to my heartbeat?” Lena asked.

            Kara grew abashed. She looked caught. She sank down a little into the couch.

            “Is that weird and invasive?” Kara asked.

            Lena considered Kara’s face a moment. She could feel the rush of adrenaline in her own body making her bolder. Often, her adrenaline came from fear and a history of trauma. She found these moments when it spiked out of sheer pleasure or anticipation could almost make her cry they felt so pure and good. Lena’s mind wandered over what response to make. She was feeling high, while Kara was feeling low.

            After a quick pause to consider what might happen if she followed the impulse, she stripped off her own shirt. She turned to toss it onto the table behind her. Kara’s lips were parted in surprise. Her eyes moved swiftly over Lena’s exposed body, unsure whether or not to look. Lena placed two fingers on the side of Kara’s throat to feel her pulse. They were both quiet as they focused on the feel of Kara’s heartbeat pounding. Lena put her hand to Kara’s jaw to tip her face up and leaned over her to kiss her.

            “I don’t know, is it?” Lena teased.

            Kara breathed a laugh as Lena started to kiss her once more. Lena’s hand on Kara’s throat felt sensitized to the movement of her breath and her heart beating and eventually slipped down to Kara’s chest. She gripped her shirt. She kept tugging at Kara’s shirt a little hard as if she could draw her any closer. When she leaned back, she found Kara’s eyes were almost closed. She started to undo the buttons on Kara’s shirt and had to focus to get in between the layers of the seams and undo the dual buttons.

            “Is this all right?” Lena asked to be sure.

            Kara nodded. When Lena got down past the buttons on her stomach, Kara leaned them both forward and braced Lena’s back to keep her from toppling. Lena turned the sleeves down off Kara’s shoulders and managed to rake the shirt down her arms. She tossed it over her shoulder and hoped it landed on the table. Kara was wearing a stretch tank top underneath that Lena would have dragged off her, but the unbuttoning process had simply taken too long, and Lena got her into an almost desperate round of kissing instead.

            As they were kissing, Kara’s hands slipped across all of Lena’s skin that she could feel. The particular way Kara had always touched her created the most profound sense of connection and pleasure in Lena. Now as Kara touched her bare skin, the experience of Kara’s touch made Lena’s mind at once let go of any other thought. She could hardly even respond fully to Kara’s kisses and merely held onto her instead. Her body relaxed and became heavy, until she had a thought to shift over, lie down, and bring Kara over her. She even glanced over at the couch, and then she wondered if they should go to Kara’s bed instead.

            Kara studied Lena’s expression. Lena was almost certain they had just had the same thought. She had been in the lead before, so she hesitated. They were considering one another’s expressions closely.

            “Should we go to my bed?” Kara asked.

            “Absolutely,” Lena barely managed, as even her throat felt constrained with the sexual tension she held in her body, and they kissed.

            Kara shifted forward, and Lena heard her grab her phone. She stuffed it into her pants pocket while kissing Lena still. Kara just stood up then, taking Lena right along with her. Lena only grinned with the anticipated feel of the uncanny physical experience of Kara lifting her without any strain in her muscles. They just kept right on kissing as Kara crossed the room. She moved as if Lena were as light as a pillow stuffed with air and fluff. Kara put her phone on top of her dresser where they could hear it. Lena had to shake off a wave of mental disorientation when she realized that Kara must have merely opened her eyes and looked right through her to make her way through the doorway and around her room without parting from their kiss or peering around Lena’s shoulder. Then Kara was crouching low to let her settle back onto the bed without a jarring drop.

            Lena held Kara’s body close to her own, so Kara put her hand down on the bed and slid them both into it without interrupting their kissing. The impression of physical power that graceful movement left resonating in Lena’s mind made her subtly uneasy. Still the intense energy kept flowing through Lena’s body from their contact would have been enough to carry her along without stopping to change anything. But Kara shifted their dynamic. Her hands rubbing over both of Lena’s hipbones through her pants withdrew. Kara shifted over onto her side, and Lena turned to face her and moved in closer. Kara was looking over her face and her body, trying to read her. That cleared out a space between the two of them and let Lena gather more her thoughts.

            Now that they had gotten into bed together, Lena found herself spooked on some level. She had not expected that she would be. Her heart was pounding hard enough to ache now. She touched Kara’s naked shoulder and let her hand run down Kara’s arm to feel the precise shape. Kara worked her fingers in between Lena’s and held her hand. Lena could not remember having ever been nervous this way in bed with anyone before. Then again, she had never felt quite this present. The two of them had not been drinking. It was neither late nor dark. There were not holding back any layer of their fully conscious awareness in order to be with one another.

            The strange thought of having just gotten into bed with someone who could do literally anything she wanted with her made Lena’s skin burn and her mind turn sharp with instinctive alarm. The feel reminded Lena of being sixteen and all tangled up with a boyfriend, if she could even use that word legitimately, whom she never really wanted to be with in the fist place. He had merely inserted himself into her life, and her friends and family had carried them along. Being in bed with him was always a negotiation and even a struggle, trying to keep him from taking them to the few places she felt justified even back then in saying she did not want to go. She felt the skin on her face and neck blushing to be remembering this now.

            Lena closed her eyes and sank down into Kara’s soft bed. Her head sank into the thick pillow. Kara’s hand moved gently to feel her own and form a kind of embrace between the two of them. Lena’s eyes opened to see Kara lying on the other pillow and looking at their hands held between them. When she looked up to find Lena watching her, Kara made the softest smile that mostly appeared at the corners of her eyes. She had gone almost perfectly still when Lena had withdrawn. And she did not look impatient or even bothered by the sudden shift. She had just followed her and followed the change. She seemed curious and quietly eager.

            Lena’s eyes flicked down over the exquisite lines of Kara’s body. She could feel her own desire risen to an intensity almost sharp that pulsed even still with her own breath, her own heartbeat. She shifted up onto her arm and came closer to lean in over Kara. The way Kara’s body shifted heavily on the bed to match her made Lena very much aware of the intensity of the desire held in Kara’s own body.   Lena touched all the naked skin she could on Kara’s shoulders, neck, and arms. She slipped her hand under the edge of her shirt to touch her stomach and even slipped her hand under the edge of her pants to run along the curves just inside her hipbones. Kara worked her lips and closed her eyes at the feel. She looked at Lena’s lips and simply watched her expression.

            Lena felt almost a little confused at the sight of Kara’s clear desire coupled with how she did not move. She leaned in herself to kiss Kara, carefully and slowly, unlike how they had been kissing before. She put her hands on Kara’s body and kissed her with greater intensity. Kara’s head lifted off the pillow, and she matched with Lena’s energy. Some silent dialogue moved between them, and soon they were kissing with intensity once more and running their hands over one another’s bodies. When Lena moved back again, she saw how dark Kara’s eyes had become and how her lips were held open. The tenderness held in Kara expression made an odd mix in Lena’s mind with the innate and superior strength she could sense in her body.

            The strange worry that had overtaken Lena before formed a clear shape in her mind. This was not about physical strength; this was about sexual politics. Kara had far more power than her, and Lena’s instincts all told her that this would lead to an inevitable sense of entitlement and ownership. Her own body would become the arena of struggle now that they were in bed, as it had been when she was young. This time, she was sure to lose. If she had not had other formative experiences with sex since then, she probably would not have been able to even get this far. She would have felt herself to be at too much of a disadvantage to even play the game. Kara had not even the slightest idea of any such games in her mind. Lena knew this rationally. Kara had what society pretended men had, an innate physical superiority over women, over everyone, actually. And clearly, there was no genuine, innate link between her strength and any threat from Kara’s sexuality to the people Kara desired. Kara’s sexuality was exactly like she was: strong, trustworthy, and kind most of all, and even shy, focused on others, and playful.

            With those thoughts, Lena’s desire for Kara rolled through her own body in all of rush. She reached to unbuckle Kara’s belt with a glance at her face to make sure this was all right with her. She carefully tugged the pants down her hips, and Kara leaned forward to help her drag them off. Kara’s pants sailed over the edge of the bed to crumple on her hardwood floor with a sharp tap of her belt buckle. Lena unzipped her own boots and tossed them off the bed, as well. Lena practically toppled over onto her back to get her own pants off and let her socks come off with them. She leaned up merely to drag Kara to come on top of her.

            That was the best moment shared between them so far, one of the best moments of Lena’ life, when Kara’s body came against her own. She felt over the muscles in Kara’s arms and back that were tense from taking up most of her own weight on her arms. Their stomachs met and felt warm. Their naked legs were pressing in close together. Lena gathered Kara’s hair away from her face and twisted her hand into her hair to hold it out of the way. They kissed and kissed for so long, Lena felt her body almost quaking. She started to rake Kara’s shirt up along both of her sides.

            Kara lifted up to let her do this, and Lena turned them both in the bed. They were sitting up mostly when Lena pulled Kara’s shirt over her fingertips and dropped it on the bed. A full awareness of one another settled over them and made them grow still. The sun was going down, and Kara turned to put the lamp on beside her bed. She turned back to give Lena her full attention. They could both see plainly how much they wanted one another.

            At nearly the same time, they reached to take off one another’s bras. They kissed softly as they did, and Lena pressed her hand against Kara’s chest without waiting. She felt Kara’s breath catch. They kissed, and Kara slid her hands over Lena’s body the way she always would, only this time she brushed her fingers over Lena’s breasts and made her gasp in their kiss. Lena pressed her hands harder to Kara’s chest and moved to work her nipple. Kara’s body grew heavy at once and her head tipped forward. Lena kissed the side of her neck and let her mouth linger on her skin.

            “How does this feel to you?” Lena asked.

            “So good!” Kara said with a soft huff of her breath.

            Lena reached to turn Kara’s face up and over to bring her into a long kiss. She moved back to see Kara’s face. She bit her lip and worked her hand. She watched Kara’s face clearly reveal the wave of pleasure Lena’s touch sent through her body. Kara’s legs shifted together on the bed.

            “Do you want harder?” Lena asked.

            “Um, sure,” Kara said as if she had not thought of this.

            “I mean, is this enough?” Lena asked. “Is this too light for you? I’m tempted to search out the most you can feel without it becoming too much.”

            “I don’t know if it can be too much,” Kara said with a shake of her head, “But this is enough already.”

            Lena looked over her and thought. She was wondering how Kara felt things, whether it was different. It had to be somehow. She looked back at her face.

            “Seriously?” Lena asked.

            “Yeah,” Kara said, having caught on to what Lena was thinking, “It’s not like I can’t feel anything except stronger stuff. I’d be oblivious about my surroundings otherwise. I can probably feel a feather or a breeze that touches me better than most people even.”

            Lena moved down in the bed. She put a hand to Kara’s back and kissed Kara’s breasts with long, lingering kisses. Kara sank back onto her hand, and her head titled back even more. Lena brought her hand to Kara’s exposed throat when she looked up to feel the line of it.

            “Can you feel that?” Lena asked.

            “Yeah,” Kara barely managed.

            Lena bit her lip and grinned. She pressed at Kara’s shoulder to get her to lie back in the bed, and Kara sank back readily. The blankets were thick and high at her sides. So Kara turned and pulled the blankets up, and Lena moved around to let Kara shove all the blankets and top sheet over to one side of the bed, so they could be on the bottom sheet. Lena crawled over Kara and concentrated on touching Kara. The lines and curves of her body made Lena ache inside at how beautiful they were, and she let her hands run all over her to feel. As she kissed her throat and chest, Lena tried to take in every subtle complexity in Kara’s response. She lingered more and allowed the pressure to build, until she had grown fairly rough with how she touched Kara’s body. Kara pressed her head back into the pillow in response.

            Eventually, Kara remained quiet long enough that Lena leaned up to get a look at her. She saw Kara’s eyes held nearly closed and one hand gripped in her hair, nearly overcome with pleasure. Lena grinned at that and went back to what she was doing. She got even rougher, especially with how she touched Kara’s breasts. The more intense the sensations became, the more Kara sank back into the bed, until she seemed almost drunk with pleasure. Lena tried to create the most intense pressure and friction she could, as Kara took in what would have seemed impossible to Lena before building up to it. They went on for so long, Lena completely lost track of time and everything else. Finally, she felt Kara’s shoulders shift, and her hand came to Lena’s shoulder.

            “Okay,” Kara said with a laugh. “That – that is maybe getting to be a little too much.”

            “Got you,” Lena said and pushed herself up onto her arms to see Kara’s face.

            Kara was smiling and seemed a tad overwhelmed. She had her shoulders still strained forward as if she could still feel the sensation. Lena laughed a little.

            “Did I hurt you?” Lena asked candidly.

            “Not so much hurt. It’s just too much – bit of an overload, _loud_ sensations all piling up on top of one another, you know?” Kara explained.

            “Okay, a little too much altogether, building up. I think I got you,” Lena said.  

            Kara put a hand on the side of Lena’s neck and leaned up slowly, her shoulders rising off the bed, to put her mouth to Lena’s neck on the other side. She kissed a line down Lena’s neck that nearly made Lena’s arms braced on the bed give out. Kara kissed over her collarbone and high on her chest. Her intent was plain, and Lena started to ease back.

            Kara led her over carefully and came along with her until Lena was lying back in the bed with Kara over her. Not even an ounce of anxiety came over Lena at the change. On impulse, she scratched her nails down Kara’s back. Kara reacted such that Lena felt Kara’s body shake. Lena looked to Kara’s face in surprise, imagining that she had somehow miraculously managed to hurt Kara. But Kara was looking down at her body, merely overwhelmed by the shift in their positions and the change in the energy between them. Lena’s eyebrow arched at the sight, and she scratched down Kara’s back again, slower and harder. Kara gripped her jaw and closed her eyes as she did. She gave Lena an almost serious look, then Kara let her body down close to Lena’s and got her hands on her body, her mouth on her throat, already touching Lena far more assertively than she ever had before.

            Lena let herself scratch across Kara’s skin again to bring this side of Kara out more, as she felt her own body sink into a deep surrender. Her back was arching already at the insulation of Kara kissing her way over her throat to come down to her chest. And Kara’s hands running over her body captivated her as deeply as always. Without the two of them kissing, Lena’s mind could remain more aware of the precise quality held in the way that Kara touched her. As Kara kissed one of her breasts, Lena made a sound at good it felt. When she wanted Kara to switch to the other, at the slightest shift of her shoulder, before she could even determine to lead Kara with her hands or make a request, Kara moved over. Lena lost the trail of her thoughts in the experience. A thought floated through Lena’s mind that perhaps Kara was listening somehow, sensing something about her body that went beyond human perception. The feel of Kara’s touch on her body was exquisite, so precise and attuned to what her body wanted to feel. Kara moved slowly, although there was nothing hesitant between them at this point. Lena felt almost overwhelmed with how good it all was.

            As her legs shifted open a little on the bed, Kara’s hand came to run along the inside of her thigh. Even as Lena had her first thought of wanting Kara to go down on her, she felt Kara shifting down farther in the bed. She kissed over Lena’s stomach and would have kept going. But the uncanny experience of feeling how Kara interacted with Lena’s body with such intuitive awareness finally registered in Lena’s mind as the simple result of the depths of Kara’s complete focus on her. In a flash of awareness, Lena realized how closely Kara had learned over the years to keep aware of everything around her in this strange world simply in order to fit in with it. Otherwise, she would have been constantly kept in dissonance. The same depth of heightened notice and ease of adapting came with Kara into bed. Her focus felt so intense that Lena grew nervous – not for herself but for Kara. Kara was kissing along her inner thigh and would have brought her mouth between Lena’s legs, which was exactly what Lena wanted. But Lena was sitting up and bringing her hand to Kara’s shoulder at the same time.

            “Kara, Kara,” Lena said.

            The swift change caught Kara a little by surprise, and she must have thought that Lena had become suddenly overwhelmed somehow. She moved up right away to lie alongside Lena, looking closely at her face and her body to try and access the change. Lena had to pull her in to kiss her hard and deeply several times before she could find the room in her mind to say anything aloud.

            “Don’t let me lead us into anything that you don’t want to do or that’s too soon for you,” Lena said.

            Kara smiled at her. She seemed a little surprised at the concern. From her expression, that statement seemed to clarify the change in the energy in Lena’s body. Kara slowly looked down over her and back to her face.

            “Same,” Kara said.

            Lena pulled Kara into a kiss. She felt her own body almost shivering, and Kara got her arms around her. They felt so close now that Lena grew comfortable again.

            “You want me to touch you?” Kara asked even as she slid her hand rather gently down Lena’s side and inside the curve of her hip.

            Lena nodded as they kissed, so Kara slipped her hand in between her legs. A sound escaped Lena at once. Kara leaned back to look at her face, and then she kissed her throat slowly. She kept her touch slow, as well, and felt over the precise shape of Lena’s body, learning her at a depth that made Lena want already to tremble. Somehow, Kara felt more like herself and their connection more like what she already knew and loved here in bed than Lena could have anticipated. That same vivid, open, connected feeling washed through her now along with the most potent pleasure being born from Kara’s touch like waves of unheard sound moving through water that permeated her body. Her hands were tangled in Kara’s hair, held at her jawline, everywhere they could find to hold them as close together as possible.

            Lena could almost feel the happiness and pleasure moving through Kara at the simple feel Lena’s intense response to her touch. She felt comfortable now in openly guiding Kara towards what she wanted. The communication felt so easy, Lena found herself simply floored even in the midst of such an overwhelming experience. Kara felt so shockingly present and moved so slow, Lena felt herself almost weighted and dragged down the depths of this experience. Kara kissed her breasts, slipped her fingers into her body, found the places where she wanted pressure and where she wanted friction, and eventually slid herself down in the bed to bring her mouth to Lena’s body, as well. She could not help but cry out and lost all sense of inhibition or distance from the experience.

            Lena’s back arched, and she buried her face in her hands. She came so intensely and for so long that she was gasping afterwards. Kara kept on with the most delicate and precise focus to bring out even the very last sensations of pleasure that Lena could possibly experience. Lena reached down to rub her hand over Kara’s shoulder and felt almost helpless at the intensity of her own response. She swallowed hard several times and found herself a little rattled.

            Kara came back up to get Lena into her arms, and Lena held onto her and practically hid her face against Kara neck. She held Kara close and felt her own body trembling. Kara’s arms around her body felt oddly steadying rather than troubling, and Lena found herself almost shocked by an awareness of how deeply and implicitly she trusted Kara. She could usually only lend the most rational and self-willed trust to others. Somehow, even from this one encounter, her body already opened up and embraced her unique relationship with Kara. She found herself not entirely prepared for this experience.

            Kara’s fingers ran along Lena’s spine. She pressed her palm flat against Lena’s low back to hold her near. As Lena’s body settled, and she felt more in full possession of herself, she grew lost in a rush of pure affection for Kara. She rose up a little, laughing, to get a good look at Kara’s face. Kara’s eyes were so dark, Lena found herself searching the new depths that seemed to have opened up in stillness for long moment. She took Kara’s hand in her own. Kara shifted onto her back and drew Lena over her softly. They kissed, and Lena almost sighed. She rested her head over Kara’s collarbone.

            The room felt so still. Lena turned her face over to kiss Kara’s chest. She kissed her way down to the center. Her hands were sweeping down over Kara’s body already. She did not know if she could be as slow, and she gathered her hair out of the way as she considered what exactly she should do. She focused on remaining patient and kissing as much of Kara’s body as she could. She kissed each of her breasts, until she felt Kara’s body give a deep and subtle shake. Her hands came to run over Kara’s thighs at once, and she felt how Kara’s hips shifted slightly more open and then the muscles in her legs relaxed after a giving shiver at willing herself even more open. Lena reached to touch her without another thought.

            Kara’s voice made a few, soft cries in a high and markedly femme sound. Lena was touching Kara almost hard and raising herself onto her knees to move her free hand and her mouth more freely over Kara’s body. The sound of Kara’s voice made Lena even more determined, and she nearly went down on Kara right at once. She thought of getting explicit verbal consent first, and that made her catch herself. She had not even looked at Kara’s face, although she felt sure their bodies were tuned into each other at this point.

            Still, Lena made herself stop suddenly. She lifted up on her knees more. She did not want to be reckless with Kara, especially after Kara had handled her before. Kara deserved just as good. Kara had titled her head forward from where it was pressed back into the pillow.

            “You’ll stop me if I’m too much?” Lena said and circled her towards Kara’s body quickly.

            Kara nodded up to her emphatically. She reached and got Lena by the shoulders. Kara’s entire body felt as if it were being held tense as she brought Lena up into a soft, comforting kiss.

            “I don’t know if that’s possible,” Kara said between their kisses.

            “If it’s possible, trust me, I’ll find it,” Lena said in a voice so low it was nearly a rasp as she moved back down put both her hands on Kara’s stomach and kiss in between them.

            Lena kissed her all over. She reached up and raked her nails down both of Kara’s thigh at the same time, which made Kara gasp and her thighs tense and then tremble. Lena gripped them both hard in her hands. If ever she had worried that her own lack of restraint might cause Kara to lose her focus and let too much of her own immense strength come out, she realized that she was past this now. Lena trusted Kara to tell her what she needed. She let herself focus only the way Kara’s thighs trembled under her fingers, the way the muscles in Kara’s low stomach would tense and her hips would tilt up subtly, the way that Kara’s body felt so hot to the touch and so incredibly wet from everything that had already happened since they had gotten into this bed together, and how almost shockingly soft and sweet Kara was in reality when she came under her mouth. Lena had to remind herself consciously to keep from touching Kara inside. She focused instead on making the rest as good as she possibly could.

            Kara was easy to read, so responsive that Lena never had to guess how anything felt. Lena knew when the first flutter of a building orgasm went through Kara’s body. As the tension began to gather together, Lena placed both of her hands on Kara’s low stomach and held her almost hard. So she felt when the orgasm spread through Kara’s body and fully claimed a hold over her. The climax rose up in Kara’s body strong and yet almost soft. Lena heard Kara make several cries in a lower voice that seemed to rise from deep inside of her.

            She found Kara locked in a long chain of waves of pleasure that lasted far longer than Lena would have thought anyone could tolerate. Kara had to breathe into it, and her gasps and cries came subdued yet quite clearly involuntary. Eventually, Kara had to lift her shoulders up off the bed and arch forward to take this. Her hand came to hold Lena’s shoulder. As Kara leaned into one elbow to prop herself on the bed, she realized that this had already gone past all precedent. She had no idea when this was going to stop.

            A kind of pattern established itself, almost like breathing, and Kara’s body never relaxed and stayed right up in the height of an experience of orgasm that must have been several flowing from one right into the next. Kara settled back into the bed, her stomach stretching again, and her body still held as tense, the only change coming in the sound of her voice that grew a little more strained and breathless. Lena let herself use just her hand, so she could raise herself up on one arm and watch Kara fully. Her own mouth was held open, her eyes moving over Kara’s body, in absolute awe of what she was witnessing. Lena’s own body burned at the sight, and she felt this as deep in her own body as any experience of pleasure could possibly have reached. She brought her mouth to Kara’s body once more with a kind of patience in her movements. She stopped thinking about when this would end, and let herself sink into the experience with Kara fully. Her eyes were closed, and she was not aware of anything else, when she finally felt Kara’s body begin to settle, her voice softening until it quieted into only breathing, and her muscles fluttering into eventually relaxing.

            Lena held Kara’s hips and rested her forehead beneath Kara’s navel. She turned to rub her face gently over the now soft and relaxed muscles in Kara’s low stomach. She kissed her body in absolute reverence of what she had just witnessed. She felt herself entirely overcome. Kara reached down with one hand and carefully got her fingers settled between Lena’s. They gripped one another’s hands and pressed their palms together. Kara leaned forward to bring Lena up closer to her. And Lena felt herself quake as she moved up to settle in beside Kara once more.

            Lena found that she had to sink down into the pillows and lie there in silence. Her mind was still overwhelmed, still playing over the sights and sounds of what had just happened, trying to hold onto them and make the memories permanent. Kara was relaxed beside her, her slightly heavy breath evening out rapidly. Lena reached to place a hand at the center of Kara’s stomach, and Kara gently rested a hand over hers. Eventually Kara moved Lena’s hand, bringing her more into awareness. Kara turned over almost onto her stomach to resettle the pillows that were a mess. Lena came up onto her elbow to let her. She glanced down over Kara’s body still captivated in shock and wonder at her. A humor danced inside her chest.  

            “I guess they don’t talk about the super-orgasms either,” Lena said. “But then I guess that doesn’t hold much relevance for fighting either.”

           Kara went still and looked caught. Lena saw right away that Kara felt that she was being made fun of and reached out for her with a preemptive, “No!” Even as she did, though, Kara turned to bury her head under the pillow and dragged the blankets beside her over top of this, so that she was buried and completely hidden. Lena had one hand under the blankets and was rubbing her hand over Kara’s back. She unburied her with the other hand. Kara was blushing terribly when Lena got her out and turned her over. Lena gave Kara a moment to look at her face to see how unintended the embarrassment she had caused was. She leaned down to kiss Kara and could feel her softening already.

            “It’s wonderful. It’s amazing to witness,” Lena said to Kara quite soft.

            She wished she could find words strong enough, but she never would. Kara still looked a little embarrassed, but she was coming out of the sudden rush that had overtaken her. Lena did not even know what to say to Kara. Many people would just brag, she thought, and here Kara was blushing over the strength and intensity of her own sexuality. It never was easy being a woman, Lena thought. You could not really win at society’s game. Everything was set up as a double bind; weak, strong, open, private, all of it – women’s sexuality always mapped out wrong implicitly, no matter how it was.

            “Sorry,” Lena said to Kara softly. “I did not mean a tease. I think you’re utterly wonderful.”

            Kara could see that this was genuine. She made a little bit of a shrug up at Lena as if to say it was not her fault. Lena gathered her into a long round of rather tender kisses. Each one seemed to soften Kara and bring her back to her confidence and the present moment.

            Soon they were relaxed again and simply making out with one another in Kara’s bed. Lena moved back to see if Kara’s blush had faded out. She could see reddened skin only left across her chest and over one collarbone. The sight of Kara’s flushed skin made Lena shift back and look down over her. She glanced at Kara’s face to make sure that looking over her naked body this openly was all right, and Kara made a soft smile that said clearly that it was. Lena let her hand run along Kara’s stomach and one of her thighs, simply to enjoy the shape of her. When she looked back at her face, Kara was smiling softly at her. She could tell that Kara had already completely recovered. At that idea, another thought interrupted her.

            “So how’s your recovery time?” Lena said with the utmost suggestion in her tone, and as she spoke, she let her hand run up between Kara’s legs to press softly at her body.

            Kara was caught unprepared and her response came out dramatic. She closed her eyes and sucked in her breath as her shoulders jolted up off the pillow. Kara shifted her body towards Lena a little more and settled into the feel almost at once. Lena watched Kara’s face with her lips parted in sheer amazement, and she kept on touching her. Kara’s eyes opened to meet her own, and Lena leaned in so they could kiss.

            Lena’s body still had not fully rebounded from before, and she tucked herself in close to Kara and buried her elbow down into the pillow, so she could stay a little over Kara while mostly lying down. Kara had drawn up close to her at an angle and pressed herself over and up a little into Lena’s kiss. Lena felt how Kara shifted to keep her legs open, probably worried about the idea of accidentally squeezing Lena’s hand between her thighs. When the idea of pressing into Kara came over her again, Lena let go their kiss. She reached to get Kara’s hand and brought it to her mouth to kiss her palm.

            “Touch inside,” Lena said, as she brought Kara’s hand down with her own between her legs and still held onto it.

            She felt Kara go still and felt her hand hesitate in her own. Lena kissed her hard. She let go of her hand to press Kara’s body again. Kara made the softest sound in their kiss, and her chest made the faintest shudder. Eventually Lena felt Kara’s hand cupping around her own to reach inside. After a few minutes, Lena had to let herself ease back to look down and see their two hands together. She leaned into Kara to kiss her hard, and another faint sound came from deep in Kara’s chest.

            The tiny shudder in Kara’s chest that Lena had noticed before built up. Lena could see Kara’s shoulders shaking softly. Kara lay back with her mouth held open and her eyes held tight shut. She seemed utterly absorbed and nearly overwhelmed. The unique closeness of what they were doing made Lena aware at once when Kara grew a little too overwhelmed with everything. She moved herself up and reached to turn Kara’s face towards her. Kara let her eyes open, and they spent a long moment looking at one another. The tone changed, and the hard edge that had come into the tension in Kara’s body eased back out. They were kissing softly with the utmost intimacy.

            As her body rose up into an orgasm, Kara broke their kiss and lifted her head to press into the line of Lena’s neck. Lena turned her face to kiss Kara’s neck and bit at her shoulder. This time she did not expect the climax to peak out and drop swiftly. She got her free hand on Kara’s neck and held her there hard. This time, Kara shook, and Lena listened closely to the sounds of her cries and her careful breathing. She smiled and let the experience stretch on and on. When Kara finally eased back into the bed and relaxed, so long later that Lena could not guess at how long it had actually been, Lena rested her head on Kara’s shoulder. She waited for Kara to withdraw her hand before she stopped her own to knit their hands together.

            They were quiet. Lena noticed the faintest sweat had broken out on Kara’s skin at her hairline. She did not think that was even possible, but given that the force had risen from inside her own body that made a kind of sense. Lena’s mind was still swimming and filled with the experience and could not center around a clear thought. Everything was sound and the impression of movement, the deeper feel of what had just happened between them. Her body felt peaceful with satisfaction and a delicious kind of exhaustion. She let her body lie still and her thoughts softly whirl without a single concern in the world.

            “Lena,” Kara whispered eventually. “Are you hungry?”

            Lena shook her head a bit, and before she could lift it fully, Kara went on.

            “Do you want to come with me into the kitchen? I need to eat, like, half the food in there, and I don’t really want to drag it all into this bed,” Kara said.

            Lena laughed aloud.   She sat up right away. She probably would have found some of her clothes and put them on, except that Kara came to the edge of the bed and Lena got distracted with looking at her. They kissed a handful of times with playful and uninhibited kisses, and Kara stood up. She sort of dragged Lena along behind her, as she made her way out of the bedroom.

            They were about to turn towards the kitchen when Kara made an ecstatic gasp that moved through her entire body as she saw the bag of macaroons still sitting on the table only half eaten. Apparently, she had forgotten about them, and they came over her as a full surprise all over again. She practically skipped over to get the bag and shove one into her mouth. Lena came up behind Kara and put her arm under hers to reach around to her chest and draw her back against her own body. Kara practically wiggled with joy and muffled laughter as she put one arm behind her around Lena’s waist and stood chewing and feeling Lena’s body on hers at the same time. Lena let her cheek rest against Kara’s shoulder and laughed a little herself at the strange and encompassing feel of how good life could truly be. She had often experienced the opposite impression in life, so she was never quick to fail to notice that arrival of times anything like this one that felt to her like such rare and unearned gifts.  


	2. What I Used To Imagine

            Lena practically charged up Kara’s stairwell, she was so eager to arrive at her place. Lena and Kara had not managed to see one another for anything other than a single, stressed out lunch for over a week. Kara had been embroiled in matters of national security, and Lena had been dealing with rolling out major L-Corp transitions. Tonight held the promise of being clear at last. Though there certainly were no guarantees when you were involved with the woman who was Supergirl.

            Kara opened her door right as Lena arrived. Lena slipped inside her apartment, a paper bag she was carrying held against her body and a lidded cup in one hand. Her usual bag was slung over her shoulder. The profound shift that would settle onto Lena upon stepping into Kara’s apartment came over her even at once.

            “I bring _many_ gifts,” Lena said.

            “What?” Kara said with an elongated sound of amazement and delight.

            She ignored everything Lena was carrying, however. She got her arms around Lena’s neck, and Lena bent her knees to set the paper bag on the ground. She got her free arm around Kara’s shoulders. They grew so distracted by their kissing that Lena forgot about the cup in her hand. When Kara stepped back, she remembered and corrected it quite suddenly, surprised that none had actually spilled.

            “This is the first,” Lena said and handed the drink over.

            “What’s this?” Kara asked in delight.

            Lena got the bag off the floor and put it on the table. She slid her usual bag from her shoulder and put it on a chair. She got her phone from her pocket, put it on the table, and took of her coat. She took this over to hang on Kara’s hall tree.

            “That,” Lena said with a swift point as she returned to the table, “Is two shots of espresso drowned in an entire cup of straight cream with a truly frightening amount of chocolate and orange peel melded in. I needed coffee before I headed this way.”

            “Woah!” Kara was saying, having tasted it.

            “I’m getting to know your taste,” Lena said and turned to Kara to make this comment as naughty as possible. Kara grinned at this so fast that she nearly dribbled some of her drink. Lena added, “Case in point,” as she whisked a small, white paper bag out of the large, brown one and tossed it at Kara, who caught it easily with a graceful stoop despite its wobbly flight and unintended arch.

            Kara held the bag up in front of her face and gasped with joy, because she could see inside and could already smell the distinctive pastry. Kara rushed to the couch and slid over the back before she opened the bag. Lena thought her like some small creature making a swift flight to its burrow with a treat it had just snatched to enjoy eating it in peace. Inside the bag was the single biggest and finest cinnamon roll Lena had ever seen. She had bought it that morning when she met a colleague at his favorite bakery, knowing that she would see Kara tonight.

            “Reminded me of you, instantly,” Lena said.

            “Where’s yours?” Kara said, leaning over the back of the couch, meaning where was Lena’s own giant cinnamon roll. Lena merely laughed at this.

            “Sitting on her couch, currently,” Lena said.

            Kara took a moment to get this joke and laughed hard. Lena dug around in the paper bag. She brought out a few boxes clearly containing food. They held Kara’s favorite sushi rolls. Lena tried to whisk them into the fridge before Kara could smell them. She seemed quite distracted with the treats she had already. Lena held the boxes up before putting them in the fridge.

            “No peeking at these,” Lena said. “Midnight fridge venture fare only.”

            “Oh, Lena!” Kara said, openly charmed.

            The first night Lena slept over at Kara’s was the day they had made it into bed together for the first time. Lena woke up after four in the morning to find Kara missing from the bed. She found Kara sitting at her table quietly eating an entire box of frozen waffles slathered with a truly stunning amount of butter and syrup with a glass of milk and a half-full carton on the table. Lena came to check if Kara was all right. Kara was happy to see her and worried that she had woken Lena up. They were both fine. Kara confessed that she could not get through a full night’s sleep without waking up and eating a meal, even since she was a kid. Since she had found out this secret, Lena loved bringing Kara special foods for her midnight meal.

            “Are you hungry?” Kara asked her.

            “No,” Lena said with a wave of her hand, “And I’d like to be ready for dinner when you are, which I’m estimating to be maybe an hour or two after you’re finished there.”

            Lena got the last of her stuff organized. She heard Kara crumple the pastry bag, which meant she was finished with her pastry. Lena checked to make sure Kara was distracted and brought a hidden sunflower out of the bag. She slipped up behind Kara. She brought the flower causally over back of the couch to hold it in front of her. Kara stared at the flower a moment. Then she turned and fell face first into the pillows beside her and lay perfectly still. Lena stood there laughing, leaning onto the couch, and simply holding the flower. When Kara finally leaned herself back up, she leaned all the way over to press into Lena’s arm and tilted her head back. They kissed a few times in this strange position, and Lena touched Kara’s jawline with one hand. Kara took the flower from her almost hesitantly.

            As Kara grinned at her flower, Lena went back to the kitchen table. She got a box out of the paper bag and left the emptied bag there on the table. She came to sit beside Kara, who scooched over to kiss Lena a handful of time and grew very giggly about this whole affair. Lena finally could not hold in her laughter to keep from disrupting their kissing. Kara moved back over and sat twirling her flower between her fingers. She looked for all the world like she might start singing it some form of a song, probably a song of welcome home. Lena disrupted the reverie only reluctantly by putting the box down in front of Kara on the table.

            “Last one,” Lena said.

            “So many!” Kara said.

            “Spend too many days apart from me and this stuff mounts up,” Lena said with mock severity and a sweeping gesture of her hand.

Kara put her flower down with the utmost caution about the petals. She opened the box and looked inside. Kara sucked in a gasp, gave Lena a genuinely shocked looked, and brought her fist to cover her mouth.

            “Sex stuff!” Kara said over to her in a dramatic whisper.

            Lena sat back into the cushions laughing. She had to push the tears away from the corners of her eyes. She reached over to rub Kara’s shoulder.

            “I did some research,” Lena said. “As much as I could anyways. And I think that material might work for you. It’s a first try, at least.   It’s a little hard to tell exactly.”

            “I’ve never had a – a strap on before,” Kara said in delight as she took the toy and harness out of the box.

            She made Lena another shocked expression with eyebrows lifted and her lips pursed. Kara cracked up fully. She leaned back into the couch cushions alongside Lena.

            “Everyone says those keep their shape for ages. I won’t bore you with talk about molecular structures –“ Lena said.

            “Seduce, you mean,” Kara interrupted and made Lena grin.

            “But I think that can take a lot of pressure and come back into shape. I’m not sure how much pressure we’re talking. But it shouldn’t hurt you either way, even if it does warp,” Lena said. “You can try it on your own first if you like.”

            Kara gave Lena a sidelong glance and completely failed at hiding that her excitement was a risk of being shattered.

            “Or I’ll wear it with you if you like,” Lena said.

            Kara grinned and bit the end of her tongue.

            “I would, I would like,” Kara said.

            She gathered everything back into the box, put it on the table, and withdrew her hands from the box quickly as if suddenly overwhelmed. She leaned in and dove head first under Lena’s arms to lie across her lap.   Lena got her arms around Kara and kissed her shoulder a few times.

            “Where do you want to go for dinner?” Lena asked.

            Kara mumbled into the couch cushions, and from her tone Lena could tell that she said anywhere was fine. She considered for a moment. She tried to think of someplace quiet and private. She was tired and did not particularly want to be photographed tonight.

            Only a couple of weeks ago, a picture of the two of them holding hands and walking down the sidewalk had appeared in the middle of a newspaper. Apparently when Winn had dropped the paper in front of Kara, she had choked on her coffee and spilled it on her desk. The title read _Who Is Lena Luthor’s Mystery Woman?_ The print said she was Kara Danver of Cat Co. Media right there in black and white. The cover story on that same paper was a huge photo of Supergirl grinning while standing over three aliens she had stopped from taking over the embassy.

            Lena had expected as much as this. Kara completely freaked. Lena finally intuited that Kara’s feelings for Lena made her feel exposed and vulnerable. Lena came up with a plan, and Cat Co itself covered an exposé on Lena Luthor in which she talked openly about her relationship Kara with the most casual air one could imagine. She said her sexuality was old news, except in National City. Lena knew that would stir up other press coverage, and J’onn helped both Supergirl and Kara Danvers to make simultaneous media appearances that coming week, so they would be photographed at the same events. Lena drew the line at doing anything more than holding J’onn’s hand when he was Kara, although she happily kissed Kara herself in front of photographers, which Lena could honestly swear had made Kara embarrassed for days. As Lena had predicted, the open press made the coverage die out immediately. She thought that maybe they were in the clear at this point.

            They ended up wandering out and walking about half an hour to one of Kara’s favorite places, an Ethiopian restaurant on the upper level of a building that was barely visible from the street. The only folks who recognized them were the members of the family who owned the restaurant, and they seemed to know them only from how frequently they came to eat. They were ushered into a back table with a bit of cordiality and fanfare. This particular restaurant served several types of sambosas, and they ordered a truly terrifying number of these and a meal that was supposed to serve a family of four to six.

            As they were waiting, Lena let spill to Kara the purpose of the intensive meetings and multiple business trips she had been on during the last week. They were beginning on a plan to transform L-Corp into a benefit corporation. Kara did not know entirely what that meant at first, so Lena went on with more detail. The whole project of turning a longstanding, cutthroat corporate business into a B-Corp required discussions that bordered on meltdowns among top executives and key managers. Some got onboard immediately, but Lena found the entire endeavor a hard sell. She expected the turnover to be high, especially among those nearest the top. Many still saw the idea of companies founding their work on a value proposition that included and something for those other than the people buying products directly and their policies on a mission statement as little more than an idealistic misstep of younger business people or perhaps at best a savvy marketing gimmick to cut into already saturated markets.

            Lena had been pushed into bringing the ideas she had long been developing to light after a quick series of three events. The first was when a massive poll of National City showed that most people believed that new technologies would be the solution to climate change. The detailed accounts of interviews showed that people were more likely to believe that humans could find ways to live in space than that they could reduce their consumption of natural resources on earth. The slant of the article gave Lena profound pause. The second was when Kara had started talking over her conflicted feelings about Cat Grant’s idea to turn Supergirl into an icon for raising awareness about climate change and ecological degradation. Kara had some mixed feelings about talking about her family’s involvement in Krypton’s destruction, but Cat had the idea of convincing Superman to speak along with her to make the framework more about a society than personal involvements. The third was when Lena got the idea to have a team gather together some of the media coverage of groups of people intervening on behalf of Supergirl and one another during rough times in National City. The hardest sell to make, Lena knew, would be convincing anyone steeped in business culture that humans were not innately driven by self-interest over any other instinct. The idea that customers would choose to privilege a business based in shared values still warranted profound skepticism in the business world. They believed that only selling benevolent identities would mobilize people to buy, and that could be had much cheaper than anything authentic. Lena used the footage to open her meetings, and this gave her leverage and evidence that could not be easily refuted by sheer belligerence and capitalist dogma.

            Lena caught on all of a sudden that Kara had grown speechless as she was explaining about the incendiary progress she had made during the last week. She cocked her head a bit, wondering what Kara was thinking. She gave a moment’s pause to see what Kara would say.

            “Lena, that’s the best gift you have…” Kara started to say.

            Kara grew truly overwhelmed. She became almost grave, a response that took Lena fully by surprise. Kara took off her glasses, which she was usually so reluctant to do, and wiped tears out of her eyes. She glanced at Lena and stared at the table as if stunned. Lena caught an intuitive sense of what was happening. She reached out and put her hand on Kara’s.

            “It’s not for you, Kara, it’s for everyone involved,” Lena said lightly.

            Kara gave Lena an almost stressed expression. Lena just smiled at her softly. Kara took a deep breath. She lighted up some but remained serious.

            “Sorry,” Kara said. “I – I think I took that really personally for a minute there.”

            “I mean, you have certainly been an inspiration to me,” Lena said and held Kara’s hand. “You always have been. If anything, it’s even stronger now that we’ve become closer.”

            “I think I would be really spooked if you were doing this because of me,” Kara said.

            Lena laughed at Kara a little. She nodded at that in concession. Still, she could not help but make light of the situation.

            “Darling, I’ve already seduced you,” Lena said. “Quite properly, I would say. Why would I shift over to some shady and indirect means now? What more could I possibly want?”

            Kara smiled, and her face softened. Their food came, and they were quiet for a few minutes eating. Lena explained a little more about trying to take part in generating a cultural moment along with the news media and her hopes for creating a lasting shift by changing the way institutions operated, while Kara casually listened and plowed through their massive pile of food. In the end, the transition for L-Corp meant dramatically limiting profits, and a lot of Lena’s best people would inevitably shift over to raise their salaries and become competitors with insider knowledge. She was less worried about breaking ties with their investors, since her family had always been profoundly greedy about ownership of their company to avoid much oversight. That was one odd, side benefit of her unique situation.

            Kara talked to Lena about her week and what little she could share about the politics between the DEO and other interrelated segments of the U.S. government. Tensions were rising, especially, Lena thought, inside of Kara, which she imagined could potentially become a highly underestimated sphere of power. Lena took the impression that knowing about Project Cadmus had slowly changed Kara’s feelings about the work she was willing to do. Kara admitted that she had recently asked Hank, Alex, Winn, and James all to promise that if they could do so without being imprisoned or killed themselves that if she died they would send Kara’s body into space in the Kryptonian ship that had brought her to earth. The gravity of that topic gave Lena profound pause.

            “I could become a part of that pact, as well, if you like,” Lena offered in solidarity, which caught Kara off guard and made her smile.

            “It’s not that I don’t love humanity,” Kara said. “I do. I just don’t want to be bottled up and traded as fodder for weapons technology.”

            “That’s not a question of love,” Lena said. “That’s a question of ownership. Have you considered drawing up legal documents to ensure your last wishes will be protected? If I were you, I’d make the documents public record even. This city would raise absolute hell in defense of you if were you were taken from them, and they were grieving. People get very serious about their loyalties when it comes to last wishes.”

            “That’s a good idea,” Kara said and gave this serious contemplation. “I had not even thought of that.”

            “I know several lawyers who could talk to you about it,” Lena said. “Just say the world, and I’ll set up meetings.”

            When all the heavy stuff was out of the way, their conversation grew light. They wandered out eventually and stopped to get an ice cream on their way home. They cut through a park and watched as people tried to keep their dogs from squelching through the muddy, high grass after some recent, hard rains only to eventually give up at such a lost cause and let them play and enjoy getting fully filthy. They were holding hands as they came up the stairs to Kara’s place, and Lena felt glad that no one had bothered them.

            In now for the remainder of their evening, they both began to relax fully. Kara made them a cup of tea. She sat at her table and made a brief call to Alex as it steeped just to check in. Lena saw Kara reach out to spin the sunflower in the vase on her table gently by its stem. When she hung up, she told Lena that Alex and Maggie both said hi. Kara finished a few texts, and then she came with their tea to sit on the couch beside Lena.

            “Should I maybe stop anymore calls?” Kara asked, given that she had to let people know if they needed to use Alex to get through to her.

            “Are you propositioning me, Kara Danvers?” Lena said as if affronted in what was clearly her own flirtation.

            “I just – I’m looking for a general prediction here. I’m not asking for any promises,” Kara said.

            “But you don’t want to sound the false alarm?” Lena said.

            “I’m trying to minimize my use of the system still, yes,” Kara admitted.

            “If you’re planning to let me, I will have you naked and in bed in no time at all,” Lena said. “I’m just trying to be civilized with all this tea and conversation and make sure you know that I want you for more than just your perfect body.”

            Kara cracked up fully at Lena’s joking. She leaned back into the couch cushions to send out her texts and adjust her phone’s settings. Lena moved over on the couch. As she drank her tea, she reached over with one hand and began undoing the buttons on Kara’s shirt. She kept an artificial focus on her tea and tried not to laugh as Kara grew distracted from her texting and finished with her texts while laughing.

            “Just getting a head start,” Lena said in a casual voice that resounded out from her nearly emptied mug.

            Kara jammed the phone down into her pocket, shifting lower into the couch, and sort of giggling at the feel of Lena’s fumbling hand. Lena put down the mug and turned to Kara with an open grin. Kara stood up all of a sudden. She pulled Lena up by her hand, and they turned into one another to kiss and embrace each other. The room felt so still, and Lena’s body felt content simply from stretching out against Kara’s. They started to head to the bedroom, and Lena caught and stopped them.

            “Should we bring that?” Lena said with a nod back at the box on the table.

            Kara pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows, and lifted her shoulders, clearly excited but also overwhelmed. Lena just laughed and came to get it. She got Kara’s hand with the box balanced on one hip. She dropped it on the bed when they came into the bedroom. Kara got some lights on. Lena came up behind her and got her arms around Kara. She undid her buttons easily.

            When she got Kara’s shirt off, she undid her belt and pants. She got her hand down her pants in the front, and Kara braced her hands on her dresser. The entire thing rocked and that made Lena smile a little bit. Lena could see Kara’s jaw gripping, and her eyes were held closed. Lena brought her hands to Kara’s hips, and Kara turned herself around and leaned back into the dresser. She was looking at the ground, quiet and nearly overcome.

            Lena reached to take off Kara’s glasses, folded them, and put them on top of the dresser. She stepped into Kara so they could kiss as she started pulling off some of her own clothes. Kara helped her a little, but mostly she waited and watched for every part of her to be exposed and touched her with both hands and leaned in to kiss her skin. They were dragging the blankets out of the way and tumbling over one another and into the bed before Lena could consider anything more. She always found her mind entirely swept up during these encounters with Kara. This was simply too vast. There was no room left for anything else. So at the background of these experiences of pleasure came also the utmost sense of relief.

            They always found it so easy to come together. Even before their early spooks faded away fully during their first handful of sexual encounters, they were remarkably comfortable with one another. Lena trusted Kara like she had never trusted anyone else in her life, and that trust manifested itself bodily. Kara shed her lingering inhibitions that Lena felt sure came from a sense of shame and the idea of being a misfit with sex both of which were totally unnecessary and a product of her culture being basically garbage when it came to sex. They had an even easier time reading each other now than they had when they had first gotten together, and they got each other more naked while making out without needing to stop and look at each other or what they were doing. Lena could feel the shift in Kara’s body and interpreted it easily when Kara remembered the toy.

            “Should we try this?” Lena said candidly with a slight gesture of her head.

            Kara was nodding up to her emphatically. Lena got up onto her knees, and Kara sat up to raise her up higher and kissed at her low stomach and around her hipbones. As she drew Lena’s underwear down her thighs, Lena shifted over to sit beside Kara. She got the box, pushed her hair out of the way, and took everything out. She had to focus for a half a minute to get the toy and harness all put together. She had to lay back to drag it on. Kara got really curious about the straps and turned over to look. She sort of studied them and touched one clasp as Lena got everything adjusted and settled.

            Lena stopped and let Kara look her up and down. Kara merely grinned. Lena laughed at Kara’s sheer and nearly overwhelmed delight in what she clearly felt was the naughtiness of the current situation. She seemed to be deciding what to do with Lena. She hid her face on the bed for a moment. Then Kara got her hands carefully around both of Lena’s sides. Her face held a full and ecstatic grin as she turned herself over onto her back while bringing Lena over on top of herself. She let Lena down slowly, and Lena settled on her arms and knees.  

.          She leaned forward to get her hands on Kara’s body and kissed her more. She let her mouth move down one side of her neck then the other, making her wait a little bit. Kara was blushing and grinning both when Lena looked at her face, her eyes growing heavy with rising desire. Lena could not really bear to make her wait, so she just made sure they were not rushing. She held each of Kara’s breasts in her hands and kissed them. She got her hand between Kara’s legs and slipped her fingers over her body, until Kara made a distinct sound of pleasure. When Lena looked back again, Kara had her hands locked over her head. She was biting her lip, and her eyes were incredibly heavy. Lena could feel Kara’s body almost straining with want.  

            Kara took another moment, thinking, and reached to carefully take Lena by her hips. As Kara drew Lena down softly, there could be no question about what Kara was wanting. Lena actually sat up a little to watch what she was doing. She expected Kara’s body to clench, and she felt overly conscious of potentially hurting her, even though she knew this was probably not even possible. She slipped into Kara easily, and she shifted her hips to press into someplace deep inside of Kara’s body. The response that came over Kara’s expression took Lena by surprise, the intensity of the pleasure she felt was could be so vividly felt rising through her body. Kara drew her legs up more and reached almost impatiently to drag Lena forward and into an embrace. Lena pitched forward into Kara and settled onto her. She found the right leverage to move her own body, and she felt Kara take up a movement that shifted along with hers at once. They kissed, and small sounds of pleasure began to form low in Kara’s throat. Lena slowly pressed into her with greater pressure, trying out different ways of moving. Kara liked everything, but she seemed to respond to pressure deep in her body the most. Lena wrapped her hands around both of Kara’s shoulders and grew lost in focus on what she was doing.

            Lena found herself thrown when she felt and then heard that Kara had begun to laugh. Lena raised herself up and looked down at Kara in astonishment, wondering how something humorous could possibly have gotten through to her in this moment. Kara was really cracking up fully. Lena lifted herself up more onto her arms to see Kara’s face even better. Kara’s hands on Lena’s hipbones at her back kept up their movements, and her body was still responding to her touch. The catalyst for her laughter appeared to be coming from someplace in Kara’s own mind. Kara reached up to hide her face with one hand. She was clearly a little embarrassed to be laughing, especially as hard as this.

            “Sorry,” Kara managed, her voice high with glee.  

            “What?” Lena said through a smile and a soft, responding laugh, as she pulled Kara’s hand gently away from her face.

            Kara bit at her lip and looked into Lena’s eyes. The corners of Kara’s eyes were watering from the intensity of her laugher, and Lena reached to brush them away. Now that Lena could see her clearly, Kara seemed completely overcome with emotions.

            “This is what I used to imagine doing in sex,” Kara said, “When I was younger. I never thought this would actually be possible for me. I guess… I just wasn’t… very imaginative.”

            “I hardly think that is your fault,” Lena said.

            Kara’s smile faded out a little too quickly. Her eyes grew softer and the tiniest bit strained. She bit her lip some more and seemed to grow even more lost in her own thoughts. Her chin tipped up with obvious pleasure, and she swallowed hard. She looked back at Lena and got her hands around her neck, obviously focusing on her own experience of pleasure. Lena watched Kara’s face as she responded closely, wondering what all was in her thoughts. Lena felt the surprise that crossed her own expression as Kara took a deep, slow breath, and then quite visibly started to cry. Kara put her hand over her eyes and wept for a moment. Lena held Kara’s wrist but did not try to pull her hand away and she tried to understand what was happening. She kept up the same movements, as she watched Kara closely.

            “It’s so good,” Kara said. “It’s _really_ good.”

Kara’s voice shook when she spoke. Lena’s brow furrowed a bit. She had no personal point of reference to call upon for empathy. She trusted her strong intuitive sense of Kara, especially now that they had been close a while. Kara’s sense of being shut of out from she wanted, from what she saw as sex, had caused Kara a lot of internal and interpersonal suffering when she was younger – until recently, actually. Something about this experience of fulfillment was bringing this up in a strong rush.

            As Kara dragged in a shaky breath, she let Lena bring her hand down away from hiding her face. Lena pushed the tears away from the corners of Kara’s eyes. Kara looked into Lena’s eyes as her crying faded out.   Lena held Kara’s face in both her hands and kissed her with many deep and soft kisses. Kara got her arms around Lena and let the feel of their kissing and the shifting of their hips as they moved together settle over her entirely. As she relaxed, Lena felt Kara’s body grow heavy and her stomach start to tense with the first flutters of rising pleasure.

They went on for so long, Lena had more or less forgotten how to even think. Kara had her face pressed to the curve of Lena’s neck. Kara leaned back suddenly, as if coming to herself.

            “Don’t let me wear you out,” Kara said, her voice strained with pleasure.

“I would love being worn out from this,” Lena said honestly. “I would do this with you all night. Might have to use a few different positions, though.”

            She saw that idea play through Kara’s mind, and her own eyebrow flicked up in anticipation of the coming response even before Kara could grin and make a soft laugh as the skin on her cheeks, neck, and chest flushed. After a while, Lena got up onto her knees. She dragged Kara up into sitting with her weight propped on her hands behind her. She placed her hands on Kara’s low back to help pull her forward. Kara grew completely lost in the sensations moving up along her body. She let her weight go back into her arms and her head tip back. Lena reached out and touched her throat, loving the sight of Kara’s body and the signs of what she felt inside with the deepest sense of reverence for her beauty.

            Kara let Lena keep on, shifting them at times to come into other positions, until Lena felt certain that they were both experiencing different forms of exhaustion. Kara’s body was trembling vividly as she was simply becoming overwhelmed. Lena turned over onto her back and brought Kara onto her knees over her. Kara focused on not making her movement too rough and eventually seemed even more exhausted with her intense focus. Lena sat up and led Kara to lie back once more. She got the sense that Kara’s body was held close to orgasm and had been for a long time. She wondered if Kara could come from this if they were to keep on long enough, but they had plenty of time to figure things like this out. So Lena put her hand between Kara’s legs and watched her response closely.

            With the added sensations, Kara’s voice broke out into cries of pleasure right away. Her back arched, and her hips titled up. Kara rose up almost immediately into a climax. Lena could not move freely with Kara’s muscles clenched, but she shifting her bodyweight to create some pressure and kept touching her with her hand. The intensity of Kara’s climax seemed even more profound than usual, and when Lena let her hands move up Kara’s body and come to both of her breasts, Kara’s shoulders raised up off the bed and her body shook harder than Lena had ever felt before. Kara’s body was held so tense that she could not even cry out. Instead, she gasped in her breath in what felt to be deep swallows of air. When she finally shifted back and slowly began to relax, Lena eased down, until she was barely shifting her hips into Kara. She felt Kara’s muscles relax and her movements grow freer. Kara gasped and trembled at the sensations in her body now. Eventually, her hips grew still, and Lena could feel that she was ready to stop.

            Lena glanced at the toy, which seemed to have survived, as she took it off. Kara leaned up and grabbed her by the arms. She pulled Lena over her, and they were making out together all of a sudden. They finally shifted to actually lie properly in the bed. They ended up kissing and barely talking for the remaining hours before they were both fading into sleep. They stopped at one point to get a long drink of water. Both of them had to make a valiant effort to climb out of bed to get on some clothes and brush their teeth. Every night when they settled into bed together, they would start out close and embracing. As they fell asleep, they would end up with just one part of their bodies touching. Tonight, Lena focused on the feel of Kara’s arm running down along her own stomach until her hand rested against Lena’s nearly at Lena’s waist. That feel was her last thought before she fell asleep.

 

            Lena awoke in the quiet of the middle of the night. She turned her head on the pillow to find Kara missing. She heard the softest sounds coming from the kitchen where Kara was eating. Her drowsiness nearly carried her back to sleep, but there was something in the particular, subdued quality of Kara’s movements from the other room and a kind of atmosphere that made Lena’s mind focus and bring her out of sleep. She got up to put on a few clothes, yawned heavily, and stretched her back.

            Somehow, Kara had not heard Lena rise. She sat at the table wearing only a ribbed tank top and a pair of underwear. She had her sushi all spread out in front of her and a pair of chopsticks in her hand, but she was not eating. She had her elbows on the table and her forehead rested against her hands. She seemed a little severe from the line of her back and shoulders.

            As she came up behind her, Lena said, “Hey,” softly to keep from startling Kara. Kara turned to Lena with a slight smile, and her expression was hard to read. Lena came and ran her hands over Kara’s body through the thin fabric of the shirt. She got herself a fresh glass of water and moved a chair closer to Kara to sit beside her. She noticed right away how few pieces of her food Kara had eaten in the time this had taken compared with what would have been usual. She kissed the back of Kara’s neck very lightly and rubbed at her back for a moment.

            “You okay?” Lena asked.

            “I’m just thinking,” Kara said in a halted tone.

            “What about?” Lena asked.

            “Just all of this,” Kara said.

            Lena got the clear sense that Kara was talking about their relationship. Her tone seemed grave and mismatched with what Lena would have expected. She could not quite guess yet where Kara’s mind had gone. She seemed so uncharacteristically serious and even sad.

            “Is it good?” Lena asked simply.

            “I never thought I could have this, you know?” Kara said. “This is just so much more than I thought I would find. It’s…”

            Kara huffed a bit of a laugh. She straightened her back and waved her hand dismissively. She shook her head a bit.

            “I’m sorry. I’m – I’m making this all so serious,” Kara said. “This ought to be fun.”

            Lena more or less dismissed all of that. Kara noticed this, and her face changed. She became quite openly distressed now. Lena looked at her closely in silence.

            “I just don’t think that I deserve this in my life,” Kara admitted. “I don’t _fit_ with this.”

            Lena could not help but make a single huff of laughter at that first sentence. She looked closely at Kara in astonishment. She reached to slip her hand into Kara’s and gripped the base of her thumb. Kara held her hand back and almost dragged it to her face, Lena could imagine, but stopped herself. Lena reached with the other hand to push Kara’s hair over her shoulder to see her face better, and Kara looked over at her.

            “You’re going to have to explain a bit more,” Lena said. “I’m not quite sure how you’ve gotten there exactly. That all seems rather strange and far-fetched to my mind.”

            She let her hand run down over Kara’s back. Kara leaned into her own hands again, thinking. The line of her spoke of a deep sadness and made Lena become deeply serious herself, even if she could not take Kara’s sentiments before seriously. Something was getting to her in the deepest sense.

            “I keep thinking about how this is going to end,” Kara said. “You know, the way I live my life, it doesn’t seem right to bring someone as close as this to be with me this way. I feel… selfish. If I keep doing what I’m doing, one of these days, I’m not coming back. There’s no real future with me for anyone, I don’t think, or no reason to believe that there will be. I just always wanted to fall in love and be in this great relationship with someone else. And, like, I know that’s not the way my life is shaped. Those aren’t my priorities. I’ve known for a long time that I should not do this to anyone.”

            They were silent for a long moment. Kara stared down at the table. She seemed to be locked in some inner conflict. Lena got the distinct sense that she was not a part of this. This was something deeper and older.

            “When you think about the future that you and I have together, you picture yourself dead?” Lena asked slowly to clarify, blinking in near astonishment as she realized how well this idea matched with Kara’s tone and energy. “That’s what you picture in your mind? And nothing else?”

            “That’s what’s most realistic,” Kara said. “The other stuff feels like this distant fantasy. When I was a girl, I struggled so hard to picture my life here as an adult. I think that Alex could sense that in me, somehow. We had this whole, elaborate joke that became just so evolved about how we were going to be old ladies together – live on a farm, have cats, go on adventures to the seashore, fight with our canes in art museums where all the young people working there would be conflicted about throwing us out. We even had these ridiculous red and purple hats with these wide brims and all this jewelry we thought was gaudy and fancy that we would put on and be our old lady selves.”

            Lena laughed softly at this as she held Kara’s hand in both of her own.

            “I think that helped me, you know? Back then. I mean, I think that made me believe that I could live some kind of a life here. By picturing my life towards its end, that meant that there had to be something there in the middle, even if I couldn’t see it. And Alex was there at the end, so I had this impression that I would never be all alone. But in that fantasy, I lived like I was human. I did it so well that I actually _became_ human.

            “That’s what all of the stuff I learned to picture for myself depended upon. When I think now about all those ideas I had about finding love, getting married, maybe having children to play alongside Alex’s kids at the park and go to school together like we did, all that seems like such a detached illusion to me. It’s almost as if I knew that Alex needed me to be okay even then. When I picture myself as I really am – I think even back then when I had a clearer sense of myself that I didn’t share with anyone – I can’t picture anything like that. I can’t picture anything at all.”

            Lena spent a long moment lost deep in thought. She had an idea about what was happening after hearing all of this. Kara had put down her chopsticks. Her appetite seemed ruined by these thoughts. Her entire body felt bowed with grief to Lena. Lena rubbed her hand across her mouth as she gathered her thoughts together. She did have something to say about this.

            “You know,” Lena said, “When I was a girl, I don’t know, maybe even nine or ten, old enough to have sleepovers but not at all my adult self as yet, I can remember having these friends who would talk all about the lives they were going to have when they grew up. They talked about it in such detail – these descriptions of their husbands and how they would design new fashions, make movies, become famous singers, all of this stuff. And I remember being absolutely stunned whenever they would go into all of that. I never participated. I was always silent. I honestly could not picture my future life even in my twenties much less further along. That seemed so strange to me that they could, when I couldn’t even fake it and play along. Whenever they noticed, they would just start to talk about my life, so glib and comfortable imagining it, all these various ideas about how it would be.

            “I can also remember the precise place I was sitting in the library of my undergraduate college in a widow seat facing the east lawn when I read in this psychology book about how people who had been through massive traumas could no longer imagine future lives for themselves. That was a nearly universal experience among them. The main idea being discussed was something about their relationships to time being different, fragmented, and alienated from other people’s, but what stuck with me was how deeply that description resonated with me to the point that I clearly recognized myself even in excerpts from interviews that were quoted. At that age, I thought that was so strange, because I had never had any experiences of trauma, quite obviously, I was living this life of immense privilege.”

            Lena made a kind of scoff, lost in thinking about her younger self and her skewed perspective. She shook her head a little to clear her thoughts. Her hands the held Kara’s shifted a little.

            “Experiences of trauma, they make you aware in this conscious way that life as you know and experience it is so fragile. Your mind tries to hold onto that to become more prepared. But you can’t really process something like that. You have this sense that only this delicate thread, this thin layer of coincidence upholds your reality. You know instinctively that it could break at any time. If anything feels inevitable, it’s that break. Everything that stands between you and oblivion becomes thin and ephemeral in your mind. That sense of the frailty of reality must be so strong for you. I mean – Kara, you have seen all of your people disappear. You have seen the death of worlds.

            “I’m sure there must be some added estrangement from becoming this icon, this archetype of strength. People you see as untouchable – the woman of steel. So a chasm could easily open out between people’s idea of you and your own idea of your world. I am not trying to say that you can or should change this somehow and come around to seeing a positive future for yourself. All I am saying is that what you’re sensing, what you’re seeing in your mind’s eye, I don’t believe that’s some deep sense of the truth that you typically ignore and that you would own all the time if you were a better person. That’s not some deep, intuitive vision about what’s to come. It is far less likely that you will die tomorrow than that you will live to be sixty or ninety – hell, you might live to be three hundred on this earth – no one knows. Your life will not be easy to take away from you. And you do not need to give it up preemptively for anything or anyone and certainly not me.

            “You’re so driven to protect people that I think that instinct might run away with you at times. What I want is not to be protected from risks by staying at some distance from you where only your benevolence touches me. I want to be with you, close, right at the heart and the thick of everything, even if we then hide away together in some sheltered space whenever we get a chance. I’m fully aware that this is not everything and that there are risks in life. I was painfully aware of that even before you came along. And I am not under any delusions about how you’re going to leave off being who you are and protect yourself for my sake.

            “Lovers can and do die. That’s a universal experience. They get into car accidents. They get cancer. They contract HIV. They commit suicide. I’m not exchanging some secure life of happiness for a chaotic life of impending misery simply by choosing to be with you. You are what feels safe and rich and life-giving to me. And the risk runs both ways. I’d be a lot easier to kill than you would, in truth, and there are plenty of people out there would kill me if they knew they could get away with it or make money off of it. Please, just try to remember that predicting the future is not actually one of your superpowers.”

            Kara laughed very softly at this last idea and the familiar sound made Lena smile. Kara’s eyes moved over Lena’s face. They were so soft and sad still. She looked tired to Lena in some deeply seated way. Lena brought a hand to the back of Kara’s neck, and she tilted their foreheads together. She felt Kara take a deep breath, and her body shifted and relaxed. Lena smiled softly at the feel of this, then she slipped in close to hold Kara in an embrace as they sat in the still, dim kitchen that felt so open and empty in the night except for the two of them.

 

            The sun had risen when Lena woke up. She lay on her stomach with her head off the pillow and her face towards the wall in complete stillness for a little while. She heard Kara turn the pages of a book beside her in the bed a handful of times. She lifted herself onto her arms and turned towards Kara. Kara smiled over at her. She was reading with her glasses off. The title of the book read _Your Atomic Self_ and Kara’s hand obscured the author’s name, something Stager. The nerdiness of the title made Lena smile a little.

            From Kara’s concentrated face as she read the book, Lena could tell that she had arisen earlier and eaten breakfast already. Otherwise, she would have been bleary and fragile still. She would not have that attentive focused look of a passionate nerd hard at work seeking out a new and profound experience of wonder about her world.

            “Are you hungry?” Kara asked to check.

            “No, not yet,” Lena said, still feeling fine after eating a couple of sushi rolls with Kara in the middle of the night, “I think I’ll just catch the second breakfast.”

            Lena turned herself over onto her back, and Kara reached over to touch Lena’s hand. Her book tilted back, neglected. Kara seemed to be studying the precise lines of Lena’s hand in the morning sunlight with the most profound concentration.

            “How’s the book?” Lena asked.

            “So good,” Kara said. “It’s all about envisioning the various elements in the physical world and the human body. It’s written in second person, so it often makes me laugh.”

            “You should write the author and have him do an addendum for you on Kryptonian biology,” Lena said. “It could launch a second edition.”

            “Much of it would be the same,” Kara said thoughtfully.

            Lena sat herself up with a groan that made Kara laugh. With a bit of a smirk, Lena clambered unnecessarily over Kara roughly to get out of bed on her side. When she came back from the bathroom, she dove across Kara and fell flat on her stomach without making her way fully across or getting her legs all the way into the bed. Kara dropped her book on the bedside table and sat up to get her arms around Lena’s body, bending her knees to bring her tumbling in even closer.

            Lena got herself turned around so they could kiss. Her knees were curled in close, nearly behind Kara’s back. Kara slipped her hands around Lena’s body as if to feel the entire shape of her.

            “Kara Danvers,” Lena whispered near Kara’s ear, and Kara turned her head a little in attention, “I think I am terribly in love with you.”

            She turned Kara’s face immediately to bring her into a kiss. Kara made a soft sound that would have been her spoken response. Lena kept her there so long that Kara seemed nearly breathless. Their lips parted just enough so Kara could speak.

            “You kiss me that sweet, and I believe you really might be,” Kara teased.

            Lena smiled even as she kissed Kara once more. Kara slid a hand up Lena’s thigh beside her. She slid her hand very slowly down the inside of Lena’s thigh, only a little at a time. Lena’s back tensed in anticipation. Kara’s hand slipped under the edge of the fabric to touch Lena’s body with her fingertips, and Lena gasped a little in their kiss.

            Eventually, she felt Kara still smiling. Lena moved back a little to see Kara’s face. Some delighted. naughty thought seemed to be dancing in Kara’s mind. She raised an eyebrow and bit her lip as she studied Lena’s face. Her hand slipped slowly over Lena’s body. Lena waited, curious about what Kara would say.

            “Want me to see how fast I can do it?” Kara asked.

            Lena gave her a curious expression, uncertain what exactly Kara meant. But Kara bit her lip and raised an eyebrow. She looked so thrilled. Lena nodded on a kind of instinct. All of a sudden, Kara’s hand on Lena’s body moved so fast that the sensation came over Lena as a hard vibration. Lena practically jumped. Her hand came over her mouth, as she cried out.

            Kara stopped at once and simply busted up with laughter. Lena clutched at the sides of Kara’s neck and hid her face on Kara’s shoulder. She was nearly winded. She gathered her wits, as Kara rocked her back and forth a little, still laughing. Lena turned her face back in mock outrage. Lena pushed Kara, and Kara let herself fall over onto her side, still laughing hard in the purest fit of delight.

            “You knew you could do that the whole time, didn’t you?” Lena challenged her.

            “I never tried it before,” Kara said and kept laughing.

            “Why not?” Lena asked.

            Kara made a shrug at her.

            “I wanted to be in tune with humans and all,” Kara said.

            Lena gasped a few incoherent words.

            “Want me to do it some more?” Kara asked and bit her lip with her eyebrow raised in a deviant kind of joy.

            “Yes, but!” Lena said to make sure Kara did not start right away, “You’ll have to bring it down to like a third of that at least. Maybe you can build up to it. I’m not sure.”

            Kara kissed Lena and got her hands on her again. Lena nearly jumped off of her. Kara stayed soft. Lena climbed over her. Kara started out slow and the speed up built up gradually. Soon, Lena was lying over Kara, clutching at her shoulders, and gasping desperately. She rose up into a sharp orgasm almost embarrassingly fast. She let her face rest on Kara’s chest and felt her still shaking with subdued laughter. She looked up to see Kara’s face.

            “How dare you,” Lena practically whispered.

            Kara shifted under Lena to move herself lower down in the bed and let Lena rest on her side with her back up against the pillows. Lena let her head come all the way down to the mattress as she recovered. She sat up again when she had fully gathered herself together once more.

            “Well, I am wide awake now, in case you were worried,” Lena said.  

            Kara sat with her back to the windows, her knees bent, and her hands holding her shins. She was flushed from her laughter and whatever embarrassment was piled up underneath all that sheer, naughty delight. Kara pushed her hair back over her shoulders. Lena sat herself up fully. Kara seemed reticent and leaned her face down into her knees. The morning sun come over her from behind her and made her outline blurry with intense lighting. Kara leaned back up to look at Lena’s face. They were still and shared a quiet moment just looking on one another.

            “Thank you for… how you are… with me,” Kara said with a profound sense of reticence. “I’m so grateful for you.”

            Lena grew entirely overwhelmed upon hearing this. She learned forward at once and had to get both hands on Kara. She was not even sure what she should do with her to communicate any significant part of how she felt. She was gripped by what felt almost a crisis of the deepest affection for Kara. Lena ended up getting Kara by the wrists, toppling her onto her back, and leaning down to kiss her hard and slow. She leaned up to look at Kara’s face, still struggling to find words.

            “I’m certain that every decent person in this city feels that sentiment towards you by this time, after everything you’ve done for us all,” Lena said. “But I should say that I am especially lucky. I get to love you back, and the exchange is simply exquisite.”

            Lena got Kara’s hand in her own and knitted their fingers to press their palms together. The sunlight was hitting Kara’s skin. Lena had realized some time ago how Kara would bask in it quietly, sitting near windows or outside whenever she could. Her mind tried to play out an idea of how Kara’s cells were responding to the sunlight in a quiet dance playing out under her skin. She felt overcome with an absolute sense of wonder at Kara’s existence. Lena looked down and grinned at Kara, who lay there beaming back up at her. They were complete and utter nerds both of them – two geek girls in love with one another and the beauty in their world.  

**Author's Note:**

> People feeling compelled to talk with me at length about these characters, shows, stories, queer stuff, love, their lives, etc. is basically the awesome form of payment I receive for writing these stories! If you're a silent lurker, I feel you and appreciate you, too! But hit me up if you are at all inclined on here or as YesBothWays on Tumblr! I'm be delighted to hear from you!


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